Home sweet (temporary) home

Renting your city loft or your urban studio apartment? It’s impossible to give your temporary pad a more permanent dose of style when you rent. Right? Wrong! We’re here to tell you that renting is simply not an excuse for living in a space that doesn’t work for you functionally and aesthetically. Of course there are things you can’t do – we wouldn’t advise bashing down walls and pulling up all the carpets (unless of course your landlord says ‘go for it!’) – however, there are things that you can do (without a hard hat or needing to hire a referee to stand between you and your landlord while you explain that the built-in blinds ‘just weren’t working’ for you). About.com contributor Robin White has this to say:

“Regardless of your lifestyle, any home turf should to be ready to provide you with the main needs of living. Plan your space and purchases to meet those needs and fit the space available. As you begin to select furnishings for your new, small, temporary home, think of the main ways you’ll be using the space. Everyone’s needs are different to some extent. But everyone needs a place to sleep, to relax, to eat, to work, and to store things.”

Sleep
Choose the best bed you can afford and go for the biggest one you can. Make sure there’s a little space around it for the practical stuff – bedside table, a lamp and whatever else you have to have in your bedroom.

Relax
The living room in a small apartment needs to be multi-functional. Choose your furniture with care – a sectional sofa, an ottoman that doubles as a coffee table and additional seating, a TV cabinet with loads of storage for remotes, DVDs, back issues of your favourite mag, are all chic small space solutions. ‘Wall-mounted’ and ‘free-standing’ are your friends when it comes to shelving books, picture frames and that gorgeous vase you picked up on your backpacking adventures. Add a fabulous, colourful rug that feels almost as good as freshly cut grass beneath your feet, and you’ve got a living room worthy of your lifestyle.

Eat
Cookin’ in a closet-size kitchen go you reaching boiling point? Well, we can’t solve the space (or lack of it) issue, but we can offer this advice – fill it with only the appliances you need. If you haven’t been making veggie juice smoothies every morning with that state-of-the-art juicer you picked up at ‘a bargain’ then it shouldn’t be taking up valuable counter space. There are two thing you really need – a safe place to cook food and a safe, clean place to store food. Get yourself a microwave that doubles as a convection oven, a mini-fridge that fits neatly under the counter and if you can squeeze it in without feeling like a sardine in a 200g can, a small seating area with a bistro table and pair of chairs would seal the deal.

Work
A spacious desk is a luxury in a small apartment, so you need to focus on the essentials – a landing pad for your computer, a comfortable working chair and storage for your office supplies and books. Just be sure to be a bit ruthless when it comes to choosing what needs to be stored and what can be chucked out.

Store things
Creativity is the mother of all invention and in few places is this statement as relevant as it is when it comes to storing stuff in a ‘shoebox’. “Every inch of a small apartment must be used for some necessary purpose. Hang a broom and mop from wall-hooks. Use under-bed boxes for cleaning supplies. Install shelving around the top of the walls for linens, tissue, out-of-season clothes, and extra bedding.” [source: www.ask.com]
When planning storage it comes down to this: A place for everything, and everything in its place. Sound familiar? We said the same thing about home offices in this post.

A little freaked out about how much the above tips will cost you to implement? Take a few deep breaths and relax… Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was the small space you currently call ‘home’. Prioritise, keep the basics at the top of your list and take it one step (or sofa) at a time.